Back in January of this year, Netflix premiered Woman of the Dead, a crime thriller from Austria with slight supernatural overtones. I figured I’d give it a shot, since I was in the mood for a good Lifetime-type crime story. Do you know what I mean when I refer to these Lifetime TV movies? They’re goofy crime “thrillers” regarding soccer moms who become amateur sleuths that wind up being so silly that they’re more unintentionally funny than anything else. But within the first fifteen minutes of its first episode, Woman of the Dead proves itself to be more of a Hitchcockian thriller: a darker, high-brow, and sophisticated thriller that’s genuinely exciting.
Anna Maria Mühe stars as Brunhilde Blum (everybody calls her Blum), an undertaker in a small Austrian mountain town where it seemingly snows all year round. Her beloved husband works as a cop with the local police force--until the moment when he gets savagely run down on his motorcycle by a black Range Rover that abruptly takes off afterward. With her husband now dead, Blum, soon getting sick of all the platitudes, and with no movement on the hunt for whoever ran her husband down, decides to take matters into her own hands.
But while Woman of the Dead starts out as a far better take on the amateur sleuth tale, it manages to go even further in terms of quality, once Blum drops all pretense of seeking justice and goes all out for black-hearted vengeance. Now, as it dives into extreme violence and a depraved conspiracy between the pillars of the community, Woman of the Dead becomes more like a David Fincher film (Panic Room, the remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), and that’s a very good thing. At this point, an already exciting story has now become supercharged with suspense, as we cheer for Blum while recoiling from her dark escapades.
Anna Maria Mühe is marvelous as an initially meek undertaker who becomes an avenging angel in her single-minded pursuit of revenge for her husband. Her normally ghoulish job actually becomes a huge help to her in her murderous quest (it’s perfect for hiding bodies). And unlike most Hitchcock films, where bad things befall innocent characters, it’s slowly revealed that seeking vengeance for her husband has awakened a darker side within Blum, and God help all who stand in her way.
The only downside to Woman of the Dead is the supernatural element, which is very slight. Blum carries on casual conversations with the corpses that she works on in her mortuary and its presented in such a subtle way that the viewer can’t help but wonder if she’s really speaking to the deceased, or if it’s all in her mind. Blum’s dead husband never communicates with her--neither do any of the dead connected with the case, which makes me wonder why the supernatural element is even present in the first place, since it doesn’t really serve the story.
But it’s Blum’s determined, no holds barred quest for vengeance that really makes Woman of the Dead worth your while. It’s an unrelentingly suspenseful ride with a heroine who proves to be just as nasty as the cold-blooded monsters she takes on. Woman of the Dead is presented on Netflix in an English-dubbed version. There are still captions available for the deaf and hard of hearing. --SF
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